I've been caught too many times by fire alarms in hotels -- during the day, afternoon and night.

I get upset when the thing wakes me and everyone up in the middle of the night with no one around to explain what happened, and when you go to check out the next day - the front desk isn't even aware the alarm had sounded.

The other one (and if I had thought of it, I would've asked for compensation) was when the alarm went off in the afternoon while I was still out. When I got back, the elevators were down, the firemen there but said the hotel was fine, we could go in. Only problem was 4 or 5 flights of stairs with stuff to carry and a few of those heavy emergency doors to go through to get to our rooms. Not fun.

In general, I agree, the hotel shouldn't necessarily be responsible for the fire alarm sounding. If it was negligence on their part, that is another issue entirely.